Capital Punishment

Today you are hard pressed to find an un-tapped niche in television. Netflix queue’s are over-run with every possible genre from cooking competitions to hospital dramas, but the viewing audience’s the real love affair is with justice. Courtroom and Police dramas have such mass appeal because they allow people to feel the satisfaction one gets from doing good. Ensuring immoral citizens are brought to justice is something that we, as a society, are passionate about. Perhaps this is a reflection of our innate human desire for revenge. Rather than seeking vengeance solely on those who hurt us or those around us we do so when a individual breaches societal moral views. Our legal system is responsible for bringing people to justice, therefor it is assumed to be the best judge of morality, but legality and morality are not necessarily synonymous. Our justice system has proven on many occasions through immoral verdicts and faulty laws that it is not always the best judge of morality.

                  Morality is open to interpretation, but some morals are so widely agreed upon they are considered universal. These, that are shared by a large group of people, are called laws. It’s ironic that the patron protectors of these laws, lawyers, are notorious for twisting, manipulating and occasionally breaking that which they protect. Our legal system is inherently flawed, not because of its ideals, but rather that it is centered around people and their decisions. Laws change to reflect our culture’s view of the world, but those views are not always moral. Our history is tarnished with many black-eyes, such as blatantly racist, sexist and homophobic laws. There are specific examples of when laws permitted people to commit immoral acts. In the case of The Queen vs. Dudley and Stephens three men were stuck on a lifeboat in the Atlantic ocean. After eight days without food, Dudley and Stephens decided they should team up and kill the younger man, Richard Parker, for food. They were discovered four days after they had killed him and were tried for murder and cannibalism. The men were found not-guilty for reason of necessity and preservation of one’s own life. It is hard to understand how eating, or living, was any more a necessity for Dudley and Stephens than Parker. However, this act deemed legal is not moral. 

                   The flaws in our legal system are a double edged sword. Not only do laws allow for immoral activity but they also can result in the prosecution of innocent people. Inevitably, some people will be wrongly convicted, but a recent study shows that the number is approximately 10,000 people in the United States every year. These innocent people and their families' suffering is a testament to our immoral legal system. Actually getting to the stage of wrongful conviction is a rarity in comparison to the amount of people who spend time in jail unjustly. These short stays are hardley a breach of